


Location, Location, Location

by ScrollingKingfisher



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Az is trying to not run a business here, Crack, Frustration with google maps, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 22:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11931036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScrollingKingfisher/pseuds/ScrollingKingfisher
Summary: Aziraphale is trying very hard not to promote his bookshop, but Google Maps is not making this easy. He's just going to have to take a trip to google HQ to sort it out.





	Location, Location, Location

**Author's Note:**

> Based off this frankly awesome post on tumblr by @gardenvarietycrime;  
> https://gardenvarietycrime.tumblr.com/post/162453136090/concept-aziraphale-has-to-fight-a-constant-battle  
> Concept: Aziraphale has to fight a constant battle to get his bookshop off google maps. somehow it always gets put back on, listed as a business so people can find it. Things escalate, and he takes a trip to google hq to sort things out once and for all

Aziraphale looked at the map in front of him with a small frown. It was the frown of a man (or heavenly being, in this case) who has recently discovered that the wonders of modern technology are not all they’re cracked up to be. 

 

“Oh dear,” he tutted as he used the tips of his fingers to zoom in on the screen, “Oh dear, this won’t do. This won’t do at all.”

 

But as much as Aziraphale wished otherwise, there it was; the tiny bullseye that was guiding a veritable biblical flood of visitors into his tiny bookshop. He had specifically chosen the tiny, dingy place in Soho as somewhere that no one in their right mind would go to to look for decent books. But all those years of careful planning were being wiped away by the latest in modern technology; specifically, Google maps. 

 

“Can I have the tablet back now?” Crowley asked, raising his eyebrows as Aziraphale continued scowling at the screen.

 

“Crowley, you don’t understand! There were teenagers in here the other day!  _ Teenagers _ ! And they were actually interested in the manuscripts! Do you know how much advertising it usually takes to get teenagers interested in  _ anything _ ?”

 

Crowley grimaced and nodded. He had actually tried several tempting schemes involving teenagers, and none of them had had great success*. 

 

_ *  as had Aziraphale, but like well-meaning grandparents trying to log into facebook for the first time, neither heaven nor hell’s schemes had quite figured out the intricacies of social media yet. Crowley settled for increasing university fees by another few hundred pounds, and in retaliation Aziraphale had broken the laundromat systems in campuses across the country so that they periodically washed clothes for free.  _

 

“But why are they advertising my business for me? I don’t want my business to be advertised!*” Aziraphale had spent several millennia collecting his books, and the next few trying to avoid having any customers like the bubonic plague. What was the point, he thought, of having such a fantastic book collection if you just gave them away again?

 

_ *  This was indeed puzzling because Google usually actively avoids having to advertise anybody’s business for them. For example, the council of the small village of Tadfield is still embroiled in a pitched battle with the internet giant over whether or not they appear on any Google searches. Though, to be fair to Google, photography drones were of little use when pitted against the cloaking powers of the Antichrist. But that’s another story. _

 

“I’ve never seen the point of calling this a shop at all. Why call it a bookshop when you never sell any books?”

 

Aziraphale just muttered something about “keeping up appearances” and wandered further into the bookshelves.

 

Crowley sighed irritably. “Look, just phone up the people at Google and ask them to take you off the list. It can’t be that hard, can it?”

 

.o0o.

 

As anyone who has ever tried to phone a major corporation first thing on a Monday morning could have predicted, it was very hard. But after several hours of Aziraphale getting progressively more flustered, and then of Crowley hissing angrily into the phone, they received assurance that  _ yes, their request would be dealt with, not to worry they would remove the location from the map right away. _

 

With a sigh of relief, Aziraphale pressed the ‘end call’ button. “Well thank goodness that’s over. I think I need a drink now.”

 

However, like most things involving technological hitches, it was very far from ‘over’.

 

.o0o.

 

A noise disturbed the peaceful stillness of the bookshop. It was a sound that, until fairly recently, had been heard very rarely; the ringing of the bell above the door. But by now, it was becoming depressingly familiar.

 

With a sigh, Aziraphale made his way to the front desk, trying to exude an aura of unfriendliness, which for a creature composed mostly of Divine Light was not an easy thing to do.

 

“Can I help you?”

 

The lady turned from where she had been inspecting the shelves, brightly coloured hair floating around her face in a slightly eye-watering shade of purple.

 

“Yes, hello! I was wondering if you have any children’s books? My niece just turned five, y’see, and-”

 

“I’m afraid I don’t stock children’s books. I’m an antique book collector.” Aziraphale’s smile was rather forced.

 

“Oh!” The woman looked a little surprised, as though she hadn’t really absorbed the sight of the hundreds of ancient tomes on the nearby shelves. “Sorry about that! I’ll try Waterstone’s or something…” 

 

“Can I ask how you found this place?” 

 

“Sure!” With a grin, the woman pulled out a smartphone from her coat pocket with a flourish. “Hang on a second, I’ll get it up on Google maps.” She turned the phone so that Aziraphale could see the screen.

 

And to his horror, there it was yet again; that little red bullseye was back, right over his bookshop! Why was it still there? They had promised to take it down! Three times! And yet, there it was, blinking at him tauntingly like the eye of a particularly smug cat that has just figured out where you keep the cream. He groaned a little.

 

“You… don’t want your shop to be on there?” The woman guessed, tucking one violet strand behind her ear.

 

“Good heavens, no! I’ve been trying to get them to take me off for ages, but it keeps reappearing!”

 

“Well, cheers anyway! Good luck with Google!” With an annoyingly chipper wave, the lady left through the front door again, the bell ringing cheerfully behind her.

 

.o0o.

 

“I just don’t understand,” Aziraphale said miserably, tossing another piece of bread to the ducks. “What does it take for them to remove my shop from the map? It can’t be that hard. I’ve asked three times!”

 

“There there,” Crowley patted his companion slightly awkwardly on the arm. He would have loved to have claimed that it was hell that was responsible for the incredibly inefficient customer service, but unfortunately the humans were managing it all on their own. Across the pond, the head of MI9 slipped a little on the muddy bank and was rewarded with an impeccably polished shoe full of dirty water. The ducks instantly erupted in a round of cackling at his expense*. “Look, I expect that the order’s been lost in the system, or something along those lines.”

 

_ *  It is no coincidence that both the representatives of heaven and hell and the members of the secret services elect to feed the ducks in St James’ Park when conducting their undercover meetings; ducks are the most theologically neutral creatures you will find in any urban green space, unlike robins and blackbirds, which are claimed by heaven, and geese and swans, which are firmly under the dominion of hell. _

 

Aziraphale sighed and tossed the last few crumbs into the murky water. A few innocent pond skaters were drowned in the resulting duck stampede. “Well, I suppose one last try won’t hurt.”

 

.o0o.

 

“Are you sure this wasn’t designed by your people?” Aziraphale’s frown was so firmly etched onto his face by this point (three hours since the first phone call) that Crowley was slightly worried that it was going to become permanent. 

 

“No. Hold music in general, yes, but we didn’t compose this piece.*” Crowley would remember if they had. He winced slightly as he caught another chord of clashing synthetic piano keys combined with howling vocals. The whole piece sounded as though it was straight from the fifth circle.  

 

_ *  Crowley’s most inspired composition was a metal remix of the Can-Can that could play on repeat for up to ten hours. _

 

“Oh, this is useless.” Aziraphale finally removed his hands from around his fifth calming cup of tea and stabbed the ‘end call’ button petulantly. “I’ll just have to go and speak to them myself!” 

 

.o0o.

 

It was a fairly regular September day in Google’s London branch until an Angel of the Lord walked in. Nothing especially interesting had happened; they had received a new supply of paper clips for the office and a group of confused tourists had wandered in looking for the Museum of Natural History*. But the only sounds to be heard were the tapping of a thousand fingers of computer keyboards, the groans of those with repetitive strain injuries and the background gossip about who had slept with who at the last office party.

 

_ *  This is actually a common occurance in central London; it was one of Crowley’s great successes that the already labyrinthine tourist maps would occasionally switch around the names of all the buildings and dump large groups of unsuspecting tourists in unlikely locations, usually in the middle of the rush hour. _

 

So by the time a man in slightly stuffy old-fashioned clothes walked through the rotating  door, the occupants of the office were dying for a bit of drama. 

 

Janet at the front desk hitched on her Customer Face and smiled at him as he approached. A dozen ears pricked hopefully in their direction. “Can I help you, sir?”

 

The angel gave her the the harried smile of someone who has been wrestling frustratedly with a problem for far too long, but is still too polite to take it out on other people. “Yes, I believe you could. You see, I’ve been having some problems with the placing of my business on your maps. It’s a bookshop in Soho.”

 

Janet smiled brightly. “Yes, I’ve got it here on the system. I am positive, sir, that whatever your problem is, we will be able to sort it for you!” 

 

Then another man came sliding out from behind the first like a long, besuited shadow.

 

“Are you here about the business as well, sir?” Janet asked the man in the sharp black suit and shades, shaking off her surprise with the quick efficiency of customer service employees everywhere. 

 

The man smiled. “Oh no, I’m just here to watch.” And he seemed to pull a bag of popcorn from nowhere, settling himself against the nearest desk.

 

Janet’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth, but Aziraphale interrupted with a strained, if polite cough. “Coming back to the business, I was wondering if we could have it taken off the map.”

 

There was a moment of confused silence. “Taken… off the map, sir?” 

 

“Yes, off it.”

 

“Do you mean Google maps?”

 

“Yes, that one. And if I could be removed from the search too, that would be excellent.”

 

Janet was a little stunned; the office received several hundred phone calls a day complaining that their business was not on the map, or worse, was on the map but  _ wrong _ . But in all her five years of serving in the London Google branch, she had never yet had a complaint about receiving  _ too much  _ publicity. “But sir… are you sure? We have lots of advice for businesses, several packages for promoting your business if you-”

 

The man puffed out his chest and drew himself up to his full, slightly unimpressive height. “I am very sure. I have been trying, without success, to have myself removed from that map for the past month and a half. Please will you take my location off your systems. Permanently.” He said the words politely, but there was no doubt in any of the eavesdroppers minds that this was not in fact a request, but a Command. The air around him shimmered a little, which stopped when his companion tossed a piece of popcorn at him.

 

“Y-yes, of course sir! Right away sir!” squeaked poor Janet, who was not at all qualified to deal with annoyed Principalities.

 

“Very good, thank you.” The strange man smiled genially and nodded, then strode out of the room, followed by his companion. 

 

That day would later become something of a legend at the Google office. New interns would be regaled with the story of the two men and the bookshop. Later, when the story was retold at the next office party, drunken coworkers would swear up and down that they had seen yellow slit-pupiled eyes gleaming behind the stylish man’s sunglasses. Still others would recall the smell of sulphur and old books that had hung around the office all day, even after they had left. Janet, once she was particularly hammered, would claim that she saw the hilt of a greatsword tucked into the librarian’s cardigan, with flames flickering underneath the wool. Her coworkers looked at each other and unanimously decided that Janet had had enough vodka cokes for the evening. Even for Londoners, a flaming sword would have been a little unusual.

 

But then again, who knew? You got all sorts in the London branch.


End file.
